WHAT  TO  DO  AFTER  THE  WAR 
IS  OVER 

From  an  article  by  Havelock  Ellis,  January,  1915} 

This  war — and  the  fact  that  there  was  no  power  on  earth  strong 
enough  to  prevent  this  war — is  a  stain,  not  only  on  the  civilization  and 
humanity  of  the  twentieth  century,  but  on  the  mere  elementary  com- 
mon sense  of  the  whole  world.  But  having  agreed  upon  that,  let  us 
discuss  what  to  do  after  the  war. 

First  of  all,  we  need  a  more  active,  vigorous  and  practically  organ- 
ized assertion  of  our  ideals.  In  the  present  war  most  of  the  anti- 
militarists  and  Socialists  in  the  belligerent  countries  have  temporarily 
deserted  their  principles  to  support  their  countries.  They  have  acted 
reasonably  and  naturally,  and  we  need  not  fear  that  they  are  not  at 
heart  more  convinced  of  their  principles  than  ever  before,  though  it 
may  well  be  that  after  the  war  those  who  have  firmly  and  coura- 
geously maintained  their  principles  will  occupy  the  position  of  higher 
dignity  and  authority.  We  witness  today,  however,  a  great  triumph 
for  all  those  in  all  countries  who  regard  militarism  as  supremely  im- 
portant, and  who  look  upon  war  as,  at  the  worst,  an  "inevitable  neces- 
sity," quite  compatible  with  the  best  interests  of  mankind.  That 
triumph  must  not  be  long-lived,  and  those  of  us  who  think  otherwise 
must  see  to  it  that  the  reaction  is  so  sharp  and  so  severe  that  mili- 
tarism will  never  be  able  to  hold  up  its  head  in  the  world  again. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  it  has  come  about  that  militarism 
has  succeeded  in  maintaining  its  credit  so  long,  for  its  fictions  are  so 
transparent.  Putting  aside  the  claim  that  war  is  a  good  thing  in 
itself,  even  a  great  moral  force — a  claim  that  could  only  be  made  in 
a  civilization  which  was  but  a  veneered  savagery — the  chief  excuse 
for  military  armaments  has  been  that  they  were  a  safeguard  against 
war.  It  is  scarcely  a  plausible  excuse.  If  any  one  really  believed  that 
such  a  method  is  the  best  way  to  prevent  war,  he  will  be  able  to  be- 
lieve it  no  longer.  After  this  war  any  one  who  puts  forth  so  simple- 
minded  a  notion  will  only  meet  with  ridicule. 

Militarism  has  been  deprived  of  the  only  support  having  even  the 
faintest  pretence  of  plausibility  which  it  ever  possessed.    Today  it 

1  Havelock  Ellis  is  one  of  the  ablest  of  contemporary  English  writers,  well 
known  in  scientific  circles  by  his  sociological,  psychological  and  historical 
writings.  Long  active  in  education,  he  has  traveled  widely  and  is  broadly  con- 
versant with  world  affairs.  His  pamphlet  on  "The  Forces  Warring  against 
War,"  published  by  the  World  Peace  Foundation,  is  sent  free  to  any  applicant 
enclosing  stamp. 


must  have  become  clear,  even  to  the  most  fanatical  admirers  of  mili- 
tarism, that  the  world  can  no  longer  be  run  on  militaristic  lines.  The 
natural  evolution  of  social  order  must  be  allowed  to  run  its  natural 
course.  There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  what  that  course  is.  In  our 
early  societies,  when  two  persons  quarreled,  they  fought  out  their 
quarrel,  and  the  strongest  won,  whether  or  not  his  cause  was  just. 
That  method  was  so  flagrantly  unreasonable  and  disorderly  that  it  was 
abolished,  and  the  two  antagonists  were  compelled  to  bring  their 
quarrel  into  a  court  of  justice,  to  be  decided  according  to  law,  and 
thenceforth  the  force  was  no  longer  behind  the  antagonists,  but  be- 
hind the  court.  But  it  is  just  as  unjust  and  as  disorderly  for  two  nations 
to  settle  their  quarrels  by  force  as  for  two  individuals.  The  natural 
evolution  must  be  allowed  to  proceed,  and  nations,  like  individuals, 
must  bring  their  quarrels  into  an  international  court.  That  is  the  aim 
we  now  have  clearly  before  us. 

The  one  great  fact  which  this  war  has  brought  home  to  us  is  that 
under  modern  conditions  a  war  is  not  the  mere  private  concern  of  the 
nations  that  choose  to  fight.  It  is  the  concern  of  the  whole  world. 
In  old  days  two  nations  could  fight  while  the  rest  of  the  world  looked 
on  unconcerned  and  went  about  their  own  business.  It  is  so  no 
longer.  The  non-belligerents  suffer  only  less  severely  than  the  bel- 
ligerents. Look  at  Holland.  Look  even  at  the  great  and  powerful 
United  States.  There  is  no  dominion  in  the  civilized  world,  from 
Canada  to  Australia,  which  is  not  suffering  severely  from  this  Euro- 
pean war.  Yet  they  were  never  consulted  about  it.  Nobody  asked 
their  consent.  Clearly  a  monstrous  injustice  has  been  committed 
against  the  whole  civilized  world.  We  have  to  see  to  it  that  in  future 
no  war  is  waged  without  the  permission  of  all  those  nations  which, 
however  neutral,  will  have  to  pay  for  that  war.  We  have  also  to  see 
to  it  that  without  their  participation  no  peace  is  arranged. 

For  some  years  the  more  progressive  people  in  the  world  have 
been  looking  toward  The  Hague  with  a  new  hope.  Holland  is  the 
ancient  refuge  of  the  world's  intellectual  freedom  and  the  traditional 
home  of  international  law.  It  has  seemed  fitting  that  Holland  should 
be  the  seat  of  a  great  international  tribunal  to  settle  the  quarrels  of 
nations  by  a  better  arbitrament  than  that  of  force.  But  it  is  vain  to 
expect  that  this  can  be  effected  by  mere  treaties,  just  as  it  would  have 
been  idle  in  the  days  when  justice  between  man  and  man  was  being 
established  to  ask  Mr.  Bill  Sykes  if  he  would  kindly  consent  to  go  and 
be  hanged  for  his  crimes.  The  reason  is  that  it  is  always  open  to  a 
nation  to  declare  that  its  own  state  stands  supreme  over  international 
law,  and  is  not  amenable  to  any  claims  from  without,  while  even  the 
natmns  that  make  no  such  claim  are  always  liable  to  become  insane 
at  moments:    for  every  state,  even  the  sanest,  is  more  prone  to 


I 


hysteria  than  the  individuals  composing  it.  It  cannot  always  be 
trusted  to  follow  the  path  of  virtue  toward  its  neighbors  when  there 
is  no  visible  force  to  hold  it  in  awe. 

This  futility  of  mere  treaties  has  long  been  clear  to  the  more 
intelligent  observers  of  contemporary  affairs.  It  has  now  become 
clear  to  all.  Behind  all  law  there  must  be  a  sanction.  Just  as  behind 
the  laws  regulating  the  rights  of  individuals  there  is  the  power  oi  the 
police,  so  behind  the  laws  regulating  the  rights  of  nations,  there  must 
be  the  mighty  power  of  an  international  army  and  navy,  able  to  impose 
justice  on  even  the  strongest  of  criminal  states. 

This  has  always  been  recognized  by  those  great  pioneers  who  have 
foreseen  the  direction  of  human  progress.  Hobbes  long  ago  pointed 
out  that  states  would  not  preserve  peace  without  some  "  visible  power 
to  keep  them  in  awe."  Even  William  Perm,  who  was  a  Quaker  and 
opposed  to  all  force,  when  in  1693  he  put  forward  his  scheme  for  a 
European  Parliament  to  maintain  the  peace  of  Europe,  proposed  that 
any  sovereign  state  which  refused  to  abide  by  the  decisions  of  the 
European  Parliament  should  be  compelled  by  force  to  submission  and 
the  performance  of  the  sentence.  The.  Abbe  de  Saint-Pierre,  the 
most  notable  of  all  precursors  of  the  twentieth  century  in  this  matter, 
likewise  demanded  that  the  whole  of  Europe,  at  its  conjoint  expense 
and  with  its  international  army,  should  be  empowered  to  deal  with 
offending  states.  All  these  things  have  long  been  known  to  the  seeing 
few.  We  owe  it  to  this  war  that  they  are  now  beginning  to  be  felt 
more  or  less  vaguely  by  all.  The  way  is  thus  being  prepared  for  the 
advance  of  the  world's  states  along  a  new  road.  And  it  is  for  the 
neutral  nations  of  today  to  form  the  advance  guard  in  that  inarch. 

Note. —  The  supplanting  of  the  rival  national  armies  and  navies  by  an  in- 
ternational police  force  has  in  recent  years  become  one  of  the  most  constant 
demands  of  the  world's  peace  party;  and  the  present  crisis  gives  urgent 
emphasis  to  this  demand.  The  necessity  of  any  appeal  to  such  power  to  en- 
force international  decrees,  when  any  real  federation  of  the  world  is  once 
effected,  will  of  course  be  rare  and  slight.  The  results  of  the  400  or  more 
international  arbitrations  of  the  last  century  have  all  been  faithfully  accepted 
and  observed.  When  nations  have  become  civilized  enough  to  refer  their 
disputes  to  arbitration  and  the  courts,  they  are  civilized  enough  to  ensure 
respect  for  the  verdicts;  and  Mr.  Root,  in  his  address  on  "The  Sanction  of 
International  Law,"  shows  clearly  how  the  great  and  growing  sanction  is  en- 
lightened and  developing  public  opinion.  The  late  Justice  Brewer  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court  emphasized  the  sufficiency  of  Non-intercourse  as 
the  compulsion  in  any  possible  exceptional  case  ;  and  his  statement,  which 
follows,  is  of  distinct  interest  in  the  present  connection  : 

"It  is  sometimes  objected  that  there  is  provided  no  power  to  compel  obedi- 
ence to  the  awards  of  the  International  Tribunal.  Will  it  be  possible  ever 
to  make  the  nations  agree  that  force  shall  stand  behind  the  award  of  arbi- 
trators and  compel  the  nations  to  yield  obedience?  I  notice  that  in  the 
program  which  is  being  prepared  for  the  coming  Interparliamentary  Confer- 


etice  there  occurs  this  provision,  as  something  which  it  is  hoped  to  see  adopted  : 
'The  armed  forces  of  all  the  nations  represented  to  be  at  the  service  of  the 
Congress  for  the  enforcement  of  any  decree  rendered  by  the  Hague  Court, 
according  to  the  treaties  of  arbitration.'  Well,  it  may  be  that  this  will  be 
secured.  There  is  one  precedent  for  something  of  the  kind.  When  the  various 
diplomatic  representatives  were  in  danger  in  Peking,  you  know  the  English, 
the  Americans,  the  Russians,  the  Japanese  and  the  Germans  combined  their 
military  forces  and  sent  them  to  the  rescue.  So  it  is  possible  that  some  provi- 
sion will  be  made  by  which  there  can  be  a  union  of  the  forces  of  the  differ- 
ent nations  to  compel  two  disputing  nations,  first  to  submit  their  contro- 
versy to  arbitration,  and  then  to  abide  by  that  arbitration. 

"  Bui  suppose  that  this  is  not  done — for  certainly  it  is  not  to  be  expected 
that  the  nations  will  agree  that  any  one  nation  shall  be  a  sort  of  interna- 
tional sheriff  or  marshal  to  execute  the  process  of  any  court;  the  independence 
and  equality  of  the  nations  forbid  such  an  expectation,  at  least  for  a  genera- 
tion. It  would  be  very  difficult  to  create  a  scheme  by  which  the  mingled  forces 
of  the  various  nations  could  be  brought  together  whenever  an  emergency  of 
the  kind  that  I  suggest  arises.  But  is  it  not  possible  that  there  may  be  a 
compulsion  which  the  nations  cannot  resist,  which  will  be  potent  enough  to 
compel  every  nation  to  submit  its  disputes  with  other  nations  to  arbitration, 
and  to  abide  by  the  award  ?  Our  good  friend,  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  told 
us  years  ago,  in  that  story  which  rang  through  all  the  country,  of  the  terrible 
position  of  a  man  without  a  country.  Now,  if  the  nations  in  the  coming 
conferences  at  The  Hague  shall  agree  that  any  nation  which  refuses  to  enter 
into  arbitration  with  a  nation  with  which  it  has  a  dispute,  or  which  refuses  to 
abide  by  the  award  of  the  arbitrators  selected  in  accordance  with  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Hague  convention,  or  some  other  convention,  shall  be  iso- 
lated from  all  intercourse  with  and  recognition  by  any  other  nation  on  the 
face  of  the  earth,  can  you  imagine  any  compulsion  which  would  be  more  real 
and  peremptory  than  that?  If  all  the  other  civilized  nations  would  say  to 
such  a  nation,  'From  this  time  forward,  until  you  submit  this  dispute  to 
arbitration,  we  will  withdraw  all  our  diplomatic  representatives,  we  will  have 
no  official  communication  with  you,  we  will  forbid  our  citizens  from  having 
any  business  transactions  with  your  citizens,  we  will  forbid  your  citizens  from 
coming  into  our  territory,  we  will  make  you  a  Robinson  Crusoe  on  a  desolate 
island,'  there  is  no  nation,  however  mighty,  that  could  endure  such  an  iso- 
lation, such  an  outlawry,  as  that  would  be.  The  business  interests  of  the 
nation  would  compel  the  government  to  recede  from  its  position  and  not  longer 
remain  an  outlaw  on  the  face  of  the  globe. 

"Such  a  procedure  would  involve  no  military  force,  no  bloodshed  on  the 
part  of  the  other  nations.  The  only  military  force,  the  only  bloodshed  that 
might  follow,  would  be  in  case  the  nation  thus  outlawed  attempted  to  at- 
tack some  of  the  other  nations,  when  they  would  all  unite  in  resisting  it. 
I  he  very  fact  that  it  was  outlawed  would  place  it  in  a  position  where  it 
would  have  to  submit;  it  would  be  compulsion,  as  real  as  a  compulsion  of 
a  marshal  with  a  writ  in  his  hands.  In  some  such  way  as  this  the  force 
which  stands  back  of  the  court  within  a  nation  might  possibly  be  exercised 
by  the  nations  upon  any  nation  that  refused  to  enter  into  arbitration  or 
abide  by  its  decisions." 


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